For nearly 20 years, Hamas has smuggled enormous quantities of weapons and building materials through and under the Philadelphi Corridor, significantly advancing the construction of underground Gaza – the world's largest terror city, a modern-day Sodom. Anyone who still believes the Egyptians were unaware of this is deluding themselves.
The Egyptians not only knew, but for years they were complicit – knowingly ignoring the situation, turning a blind eye, and even actively facilitating it. While under President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi they have taken some significant action against the tunnels, proposing to involve them now in any arrangement concerning the Philadelphi Corridor and trusting them is not just foolish and grossly irresponsible, but self-deception and public fraud.
Before el-Sissi, but also during his tenure, cars, motorcycles, clothes, drugs, medicines, alcoholic beverages, and weapons were smuggled through the Philadelphi Corridor over the years, lots of weapons: improved RPG-29 rockets that killed our soldiers in the Iron Swords War, hidden rocket parts, machine guns, mines, and more.
The tunnels were dug from house basements, orchards, and olive groves. Each tunnel took between two weeks to two months to excavate. Property owners received a percentage of the smuggling profits. At one point, the Rafah municipality required tunnel owners to obtain business licenses and even charged them for water and electricity connections. At its peak, the operation employed 70,000 people. The Bedouin clans of Abu Samhadana and Aburish managed most of it. Their profits were enormous. An average tunnel costs about $100,000 to build, with a daily turnover averaging half a million shekels. Egyptian officials and officers pocketed bribes that allowed the weapons highway to continue. And after all this, to say that Egypt didn't know?
Not a mediator nor an appropriate supervisor
The very thought of now erasing Egypt's sins and giving them a role again in overseeing the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah crossing is scandalous. Egypt bears significant responsibility for what happened in Philadelphi over the years, and even those who trust President el-Sissi now cannot guarantee that a new Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood won't rise to power in the future, as we saw happen in 2012 presidential elections in Egypt.
Egypt cannot be considered a fair mediator, let alone a fair supervising entity, not against the backdrop of Philadelphi's history and not in light of Nazi-like statements by senior Al-Azhar University officials ("Israel's end, a malignant disease in the heart of the Arab Islamic nation, will be destruction") against which the Egyptians take no action. To say that Egypt's objectivity is questionable would be a gross understatement.
Israel must, therefore, remain in Philadelphi. Neither Egypt, the "bruised reed," nor other foreign forces, nor cameras – no one will do the job for us there as needed, and it's time we stop deluding ourselves. Foreign monitoring forces have failed in Lebanon over the years, and they also failed at the Rafah crossing from which European Union monitors fled in 2007.
As for cameras – that's a tasteless joke. They didn't prevent the fall of the Rafah crossing into Hamas' hands, nor did they prevent the events of Oct. 7. They simply documented these failures. We must therefore We must hope that reports of Israel agreeing to discuss these options with Egypt are false. If these reports are true, it would mark another grave error in a series of missteps since Oct. 8, potentially the most dangerous yet.
